By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Ben McCollum isn’t just trying to rebuild the Iowa men’s basketball team, almost from the ground up.

He is also trying to rebuild the fan base, and have a better connection with the Iowa students because McCollum needs their support and loyalty to have any chance of meeting the challenge that he now faces as the Iowa men’s basketball coach.

Following Iowa’s 101-69 victory over Robert Morris in the season opener on Tuesday, McCollum walked over to the newly constructed Iowa student section near courtside, which is located behind the south baseline and seats approximately 200 students, so he could thank them for their support.

The Iowa players also thanked the students for showing up, for providing energy and for sticking around until the very end.

That was perhaps the most impressive thing about Tuesday’s victory; even more impressive than Iowa’s eight dunks, than Bennett Stirtz’s 19 points, six assists and four steals and Brendan Hausen’s 3-point basket from Caitlin Clark range.

Most of the students who sat in the new courtside bleachers actually didn’t sit. They stood throughout the game and they stayed until it was over, probably hoping that they would have a chance to interact with McCollum and with the players.

“First off, thanks to the fans for coming out, particularly the students,” McCollum said in his opening statement to the media afterwards. “It makes the environment so much more fun. Even if you’re playing well or not playing well, whatever it may be, to have fans that cheer kind of just snowballs on itself where now people are going, ‘well, the students were there, this is a cool place to go.’ And then more students come and then more fans from the outside come.

“That’s what Iowa basketball needs to be. Obviously, we’re still going to be a work in progress. We’ve got a long ways to go. But I’m really happy with our start and with our energy out of the gate.”

McCollum was wise to acknowledge the fans, and especially the students, because winning at the Power 4 level is hard enough even with strong fan support.

But without it, the challenge becomes almost impossible.

McCollum has had to practically rebuild the entire Iowa roster with only two player holdovers from the Fran McCaffery coaching era.

As strange as that would have seemed just a few years ago, men’s basketball rosters are now being gutted and rebuilt on a regular basis in this age of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.

So it isn’t as if Fran McCaffery left the program in shambles.

McCaffery coached for 14 seasons at Iowa and is the program’s all-time winningest head coach. He also coached some of the best players in program history, including Luka Garza and Keegan Murray.

But somewhere along the line, McCaffery lost the fan base.

And then when Iowa failed to make the NCAA Tournament in each of the past two seasons, Iowa Athletic Director Beth Goetz decided that it was time to make a coaching change.

McCollum had just led Drake to a 31-4 record in his only season as head coach last season, so the timing and circumstances were right for a change.

It probably was sort of awkward to fire the all-time winningest head coach in program history, because Fran McCaffery, who is now the head coach for the University of Pennsylvania, which is also his alma mater, did a lot of good things for Iowa men’s basketball. The program was also in shambles when he took over in 2010.

There were a lot of games during McCaffery’s time at Iowa in which Carver-Hawkeye Arena was packed and highly energized.

But as Iowa continued to struggle in the postseason under McCaffery, the fan support started to decrease while the number of empty seats started to increase.

The situation hit rock bottom last season as Carver-Hawkeye Arena was more than half empty for many of the games.

That’s why it was encouraging to see over 9,000 fans in the arena on Tuesday because Iowa rarely drew that many fans last season. The game also started at 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday and the opponent wasn’t much of a draw, and yet, enough fans still showed up to pass the eye test.

Now of course, it helped that it was McCollum’s first game, but that’s part of why Goetz made a coaching change, knowing that it would lead to more fan support, at least out of the gate.

Fans will get their second chance to support McCollum’s team when Iowa faces Western Illinois on Friday with the tipoff set for 6 p.m. at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

At some point, the interest from having a new head coach will start to fade, and whether fans keep showing up or not will depend on the product on the court.

Iowa hasn’t advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 since 1999 and that probably led to Fran McCaffery’s demise more than anything else because the lack of postseason tournament success is what drove the fans away.

McCaffery’s teams were fun to watch because they played fast and scored lots of points.

But they often struggled on defense, and with having so many possessions from playing fast on offense, the defense just couldn’t keep up.

McCollum’s teams, on the other hand, are known for playing hard on defense and that was certainly the case in Tuesday’s season opener as Iowa bolted to a 17-2 lead. There were times when Robert Morris struggled just to take a shot, and the fans loved it.

And while Iowa would have defeated Robert Morris even if the arena was empty, there will be multiple games along the way in which home-court advantage could be the difference between winning and losing.

Take the Iowa football team for example as it prepares to face No. 6 Oregon on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.

Iowa’s biggest advantage against Oregon might be home-field advantage since Kinnick Stadium is everything that Carver-Hawkeye Arena hasn’t been in recent seasons.

Kinnick Stadium also has some built-in advantages with the fans being so close to field and with the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital located just across the street.

Iowa now has arguably the greatest tradition in college sports in the Wave, which happens at the end of the first quarter as players and coaches from both teams, along with the fans and game officials, turn and wave to the children looking down from the hospital.

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning saw first hand what the atmosphere in Kinnick Stadium is like while serving as a graduate assistant for Pittsburgh when it played in Iowa City in 2015.

“It’s a cool environment,” Lanning said. “This is one of those ones where you get excited to get the opportunity to play in front of, and I’m sure I’ll have some family and friends there.

“But this environment, it’s a great one. They do it the right way, obviously, with the Children’s Hospital, the pink locker room. There’s a feel to this one and it means a lot to the people in Iowa. They turn out really well, so I’m expecting a great crowd.”

McCollum should hope that an opposing head coach will some day say something similar about playing in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

But it’ll take a lot winning to get that type of reaction.

Kirk Ferentz is in his 27th season as the Iowa football coach and he is also the Big Ten’s all-time winningest head coach with 210 victories.

The Iowa football team has sustained a level of success and respectability for most of the past four decades, while men’s basketball has been more up and down.

An Iowa home football game is also more of an event that takes up most of the day, while a men’s basketball game barely lasts for two hours and has no tailgating.

Football games are also played mostly on Saturday, while basketball games are played every day of the week.

So the two sports are different when it comes to fan participation.

But where they are similar is that winning ultimately creates the right home-field or homecourt advantage.

If McCollum were to end Iowa’s postseason tournament misery, Carver-Hawkeye Arena would be packed and rocking on a regular basis, and the student section would be a major part of the atmosphere.

Tuesday’s season opener was the first step, albeit a small step, in achieving that hard-to-reach goal.